


Oscillations

by Syberina5



Series: The Universality of Quantum Physics Projects [3]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 06:52:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16551014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: Title: Oscillations (Oringinally titled: Them There Eyes)Word Count: 1,120Summary:“I’ll go, Veronica.” He’d begun pulling back even then. “I’ll go away…Disclaimer: I realizeQuantum Leaphas comparatively terrible effects because the 80’s and has no permanent female cast members, but it is still worth your time if only for the history morphing and physics bastardizing.Author’s Note: Okay, let me sum up. I created a miserable universe: Veronica made terrible choices and lost herself completely. Now—like some twisted type of buyer’s remorse—I am Sam-Becketting my way through to fix it. [Shrugs] This one is at least not as dark as “Schrödinger’s Child.”





	Oscillations

_It was just supposed to be that one stupid kiss. A good-bye and she was going to have ended their long acquaintance-friendship-romance-rivalry on good terms for once. But his eyes had been open and—knowing it was the last time she’d ever be that close again, something he wasn’t supposed to have figured out,_ damn it _—hers had been as well._ They’d locked eyes and she’d just stood there—her hands on his face (the boyish roundness of his cheeks belying the age of both their battered hearts), her lips a breath from his—until she realized she’d begun shaking. Shivering? She didn’t know. All she could see was the brokenness in his eyes and feel the answering shards of her own. 

At some point his eyes drifted down, his hand came up, and he was wiping away the tears on her face—though when she’d started crying was lost on her. “Veronica,” he said the with the rough tones that meant the pieces of him were grinding together as well.

She couldn’t think of any words—she was not the loquacious wordsmith he was—but shook her head with the pooling sense of _No, wrong_ that she couldn’t articulate. She closed her eyes—the wave of warmth from fresh tears over her face—sucked in a breath, and let her forehead rest on his. The trembling grew, his hands moved to her shoulders, her back. Soon she was pressed against him, his face wet against her neck as he repeated her name. 

It was the “Please” that flipped the switch, had her finally saying, “I can’t,” as she burrowed into him, totally unsure what it was she couldn’t do. “I can’t do this. I can’t do it again, Logan. I can’t.”

“Okay,” he squeezed her tighter. “Okay we won’t.”

“ _How?_ ” was the plaintive cry ripped out of her like the way she’d cried for Lilly.

“I’ll go, Veronica.” He’d begun pulling back even then. “I’ll go away and we won’t see each other; we won’t talk. I’ll be out of your life, really. We won’t ever have to do this again.”

She didn’t know how to stop him. Didn’t know how to unclench the fists she had latched onto his clothing. She was shaking her head again, a whimper slipping out. 

“I _have to_ , Veronica. I have to. If I stay, if I’m here I won’t be able to not see you.” _Not seeing him._ “Can you do that? Because all I can see is us being right back here. You willing to cheat on your boyfriend because _we_ don’t do bloodless.”

And he’d stayed gone. Away from Neptune, away from Quantico, away from her graduations, away from her wedding—such as it was—but not away from the hospital.

Turns out a gunshot wound to the chest is more painful than breaking up with Logan Echolls; the recovery time is shorter though.

And when she comes to—too bleary-eyed and in drugged-up agony to swear by anything—it’s dark in the room and _his_ hands are on her. She _knows_ they are his, always softer, gentler somehow—insert reference to a lay about, privileged existence here—and she is suddenly warmer, almost regular warm—there’s nothing like blood loss to give you a case of the chills. It such a relief, so buoying after being dragged down for so long that she hums with it. What does it matter? He’s just a dream, a mirage. He’ll be gone when the morphine wears low again.

“Oh, sorry,” he says his face in her field of vision finally. “I didn’t mean— You should rest. I’ll go.” 

She hasn’t much strength left but her fingers twist and she breathes out “Stay” loud enough that he hesitates. Soon she’s weeping and saying it over and over and he’s with her. His hands brush the tears away, his lips quirk, he huffs a laugh and says, “Fine, Mars, I’ll stay just pipe down before the kick me out.”

Only he doesn’t. He’s not there the next time she wakes and her husband is. She puts it off as a fever dream and pretends the tears mean the meds are wearing off. 

But at night he keeps his word, and since it’s not real, just the product of the good drugs, she can do whatever she wants with him. As soon as she can move she pulls him into bed with her, laughs when he asks if he can listen to her heart for a while—just to double check it’s still beating—and takes deep breaths of the saltiness on his skin from the sea, his sweat, his acerbic wit. 

But soon they are sending her home and she knows that “dreams” of Logan’s visits won’t continue. It’s the precipice again. And while ultimately Logan’s plan worked—she lived her life content enough, normal enough; he, she assumes, did likewise—the hole inside her chest begins to reopen. 

The night she wakes up to him with her hand pressed to his face clasped in two of his she _knows_ and the panic begins in force. They stay that way for a while, his eyes on her face near tears and her own breath shallow and short.  
“Veronica—” he begins but she cuts him off with a quick, “I know.”

She nods, the tears staring to well. “Just… not yet.” She pulls on their joined hands, tucks her other hand around the corner of his jaw, and brings him into her bed—what will be their bed only once more. 

Forty weeks later Gideon is there and Logan won’t ever know—it’s bad form for two FBI agents to announce the birth of their son in the local paper. 

He dies though—her husband, not Gideon (though that will happen too, eventually)—before either of them has made it up the ranks to section chief. It’s less likely for her—never one for following rules or orders; let’s at least be honest here—but he was pretty close. Her father tries to keep her from taking Gideon to the funeral—“He’s too young to understand. It’ll just hurt and confuse him”—but life is pain after all, and he’s is _their son_ , so he was bound to learn that earlier than most. 

She knows that it makes her a terrible person to stand at her husband’s grave singing hymns while praying that behind the tree she can see out of the corner of her eye is the boy she’s been expecting at her side since she was twelve.

Some day he will be there. She doesn’t know when or why but they’ve never been able to leave each other alone very long before.


End file.
